Nokia may remove DRM to bring music to the US

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Nokia may remove DRM to bring music to the US

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 4 March, 2009

READ MORE: Nokia

The north American market remains Nokia's Achilles' heel, but it is determined to make inroads this year at the expense of the ailing Motorola. For the medium term, it has high hopes from its new chip deal with Qualcomm, but its main activity for 2009 revolves around its music services. Its Music Store and Comes With Music offerings are going live this month in Australia, and will come to the US soon, though without a carrier deal, and possibly without digital rights management (DRM).

Currently available in the UK and Singapore, Comes With Music is a subscription service that provides unlimited downloads, while Music Store is an iTunes-like shop. Tracks in both are protected with Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM technology, which limits the number of handsets and PCs on which the songs can be played. However, Adam Mirabella, director of global digital music retail at Nokia, was quoted at the Singapore launch, saying that the Finnish giant is in talks to remove DRM protection. Some sources say that only one of the major record labels is preventing that move, which could boost the appeal of Nokia's services compared to iTunes and other challengers like Sony Ericsson PlayNow.

This will be especially important if Nokia is to make any impact in the US market, where Apple is particularly strong and where, as yet, the Finn has no carrier deal for its 5800 XpressMusic device, the touchscreen flagship for its music platform. It will hope that direct sales, driven by CWM, will convince a cellco to endorse the 5800. Not that it made a good start, when it was forced to pull the 5800 from shelves at its New York and Chicago stores this week, just after the launch of the $400 phone. It blamed problems with faulty earpieces (now resolved) and difficulty in finding a 3G signal on AT&T's network (still being addressed). The 3G problems are specific to the US and Nokia is still selling the global variant of the handset in the US - this works on GSM/W-CDMA at 900MHz/2100MHz.

Trevor Madigan, global head of sales for Nokia Music, said in an interview that the company would "do our utmost to launch with partners" in the US, though it is possible to run CWM without operator support as no billing integration is required with the network. "We think the simplicity of the offering will resonate with north American customers," he said. The next enhancement for CWM, apart from going DRM-free, will be the addition of recommendations features and integration with social networks.